Smoke Mountain Read online

  Don’t think about that, she told herself. Don’t think about those big rocks way down below. Don’t think about how jagged they are. Definitely don’t look down at them.

  She leaped through the air and landed in the tree, feeling the wet leaves trail across her fur in a way she found comforting. It was as if the tree spirits were saying, It’s all right; we’ve got you. She wondered if there was a bear spirit living in this tree. If so, she hoped it didn’t mind being soaked all the time.

  The next part was a little trickier. There were two more boulders sticking out of the waterfall, but the first one was too small to fit on. She needed to balance on it while she made it across to the second one, which meant landing on both of them at the same time. She wasn’t sure she could do that without falling.

  But she would. She had to.

  She wrapped her front paws around the tree branch closest to the far side and slowly lowered her back paws down until she was hanging from the tree. The branch dipped a little with her weight, and she felt the powerful current of the waterfall catch at her paws. Lusa swung herself back and forth to get closer to the first boulder. She let out a gasp when her claws scraped painfully against it. Now just a little closer – she stretched her back paws as far as she could – and when she felt the stone under her pads, she let go of the tree.

  For a dizzying moment the water spun away below her and she thought she was falling the wrong way, but then her front paws hit the next boulder and she stopped with a bone-jarring thud, splayed across the two boulders with her front paws on one and her back paws on the other. She caught her breath for a moment, sucking in the water-soaked air, and then she shoved herself quickly on to the bigger boulder.

  The slick rock rubbed against her claws, making her feel unsteady. But now there was only one jump to go, over to the dry ledge on the far side. Lusa closed her eyes and sent up a prayer to the bear spirits in the trees.

  ‘Please help me,’ she whispered.

  Then she crouched and leaped. Her back paws skidded on the wet stone and she flailed in the air, trying to make herself fly further. If only she had wings like Ujurak! Her heart raced with terror.

  Her front paws hit the ledge and then her chest whomped into the rocks, knocking the air out of her. She scrabbled with her back paws and dug in her claws and slowly shoved herself all the way on to the ledge. Then she pushed herself to her paws and turned back to Toklo and Kallik.

  ‘See?’ she called hoarsely. ‘Easy!’ She doubled over in a fit of coughing.

  Toklo came next. He was heavier, so the tree swayed more ominously and his paws were soaked through, but he was bigger too, so he could reach from boulder to boulder more easily. Then Kallik followed them across. Her paws were made for walking on slippery ice, so she had no trouble with the wet boulders, although her large size also made it hard for her to navigate the smallest boulder.

  But at last all three of them were standing on the far side of the waterfall, wet and exhausted, but triumphant.

  ‘You did so well!’ Lusa cheered as Kallik shook her fur dry. ‘I’d like to see a flat-face try that!’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Toklo growled. ‘Let’s get going. Where’s Ujurak?’

  They all looked up at the sky and saw the Ujurak-falcon swooping down. He landed beside them and changed back into a bear, grumpily shaking off his feathers.

  ‘I could have crossed with you,’ he insisted. ‘I saw the flat-faces – they’re still well behind us.’

  ‘Well, we’re all safe now,’ Toklo said. ‘Come on.’

  They followed the ledge away from the waterfall. After a few pawsteps, Lusa glanced back at the thundering spray. She couldn’t see any flat-faces behind them, but it was hard to see anything through the cloud of water and mist. Would the good spirits in the mountains help them escape? Or would the bad spirits let them be hunted down like prey?

  She wanted to believe that the flat-faces would give up. She hoped that the cubs’ brave crossing of the waterfall would put them too far ahead for the flat-faces to ever catch up. But she remembered how the hunters had followed the bears’ trail up the side of the mountain. She had a feeling they wouldn’t give up so easily.

  As they started to climb, the skies opened up, and it began to rain again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:

  Kallik

  Rain poured down from the clouds all the rest of that day. The bears trudged through mud and sudden torrents of water that appeared like rivers rising out of nowhere. Their paws slipped on the wet rocks and their fur clung to their hungry bodies. Kallik could barely remember what it felt like not to be wet and scared. She worried about Lusa, who looked even smaller and more fragile with her fur drenched flat.

  The cubs stopped to eat a hurried meal when Toklo caught a smelly muskrat, but even though she was so hungry, Kallik found it hard to swallow because her paws just wanted to run and run and keep running. She choked her portion down without tasting it, and they pressed on quickly.

  She thought it was near sunset, although it was hard to tell through the rain, when they reached the highest peak. To her disappointment, there was no snow here, although she could see it on some of the peaks that surrounded them. It looked clean and white and crisp, and something inside her yearned for it, tugging her paws towards the icy freshness . . . But unless she grew wings like Ujurak and flew, it was too far to reach. She was stuck here on this snowless, rocky mountain, with aching paws and flat-faces hunting her.

  Lusa let out a whimper as she stared at the ridges and valleys that spread out in front of them. ‘I thought we were nearly through the mountains,’ she said. ‘It still looks so far.’

  ‘It’s hard to tell from here,’ Ujurak said, but his voice was flat and toneless.

  ‘Let’s sleep for a while,’ Toklo suggested, his shoulders drooping wearily. ‘We won’t be able to keep running unless we rest.’

  They had barely stopped moving since spotting the no-claw hunters that morning. Kallik collapsed on to her side and fell asleep right away.

  She dreamed of no-claws with firesticks creeping closer and closer, their faces hidden by smoke and fog. Their paws crunched on the forest floor. Their smell scratched her nose, too strong and acrid and horrible, like a hundred firebeasts crawling over her tongue.

  That smell – the smell of firebeasts. It was stronger than it should be, all the way out here in the mountains.

  Kallik woke up with her nose twitching. A pale moon hung low in the sky, nearly hidden by thick clouds. Her friends slept soundly beside her, their fur rising and falling like ocean waves. Not even Toklo had been able to stay awake to keep watch.

  Her fur prickled anxiously. She tried to figure out how much time had passed. There was a grey, cold feeling to the air, as if it were nearly morning.

  And she could still smell the scent of firebeast.

  Kallik twisted to look behind them.

  Something was crawling along the slope of the mountain, far below them.

  ‘Toklo,’ she said. The urgency in her voice brought him instantly awake. He scrambled to his paws, rubbing his face. Lusa and Ujurak shifted, slowly waking up.

  ‘Look,’ Kallik said, nodding down at the small, creeping thing. She felt as if the ground was disappearing under her paws, like the ice suddenly melting underneath her. Terror flooded through her. ‘It’s them. They’re still following us.’ A low growl rumbled deep in Toklo’s throat as he stared down the mountain.

  ‘That’s a firebeast!’ Lusa gasped, jumping up. They were all wide awake now. ‘It’s like the one we saw in the forest – the kind that can leave the BlackPath!’

  ‘That must be how they caught up with us,’ Toklo muttered.

  The firebeast looked tiny from their vantage point, no bigger than a fly. Kallik wished it was really that small; she’d squash it in a heartbeat. She thought she could see the flat-faces leaning out, pointing up at the peak where the bears stood.

  ‘We ought to go,’ Ujurak said unnecessarily.

&n
bsp; The sky was shifting from black to grey as they came down from the peak into a grassy valley surrounded by pine forest and snowy mountain peaks. The faint light of a silver moon still glimmered from behind the clouds, and the rain had finally ebbed away.

  Kallik nearly crashed into Lusa when the little black bear stopped and stood up suddenly. Lusa twisted her head in each direction, pointing her big ears at the landscape on either side.

  ‘I hear a firebeast!’ she cried.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Toklo said, spinning around. ‘It can’t have scaled the peak so quickly.’

  ‘Could it have gone around the mountain?’ Kallik asked. She tried to stand protectively in front of Lusa, but the little black bear was running in a tight circle, staring into the darkness.

  ‘I hear it,’ Lusa repeated frantically, standing and clawing the air. ‘It’s coming this way. It’s angry. It’s coming for us!’ She twisted around again.

  ‘I’m sure there’s no–’ Toklo began, but a distant roar interrupted him.

  Then Kallik saw the firebeast rear above the shoulder of the mountain and plunge down into the valley. Smoke and clouds of dust rose from its paws as it ran, and its eyes glowed horribly. She felt a sudden chill over her whole body, like diving into the freezing sea. She had never seen a firebeast stray from the narrow BlackPaths before, and this one was alive and growling and hunting her.

  ‘Run,’ Toklo said grimly.

  Kallik sprang forward and began galloping through the grass. Toklo’s paws thudded close beside her.

  ‘If we lose one another,’ he said, panting, ‘meet at that tallest tree at the end of the valley.’

  In the distance, Kallik could see the tip of a pine tree waving above a low clump of trees at the head of the valley.

  Behind her, she could hear the firebeast roaring closer and closer. Its growl rose and fell as it bounced over the rocks and tussocks of grass. How could they be so much faster than bears? She never saw them use their haunches or legs to shove themselves off. All their movement came from their strange rolling black paws.

  She glanced back and saw two of the no-claws standing up with their heads sticking out of the top of the firebeast. They lifted long black sticks and pointed them at her.

  Bang! Bang!

  Something whizzed past Kallik’s ear with a high-pitched humming sound.

  Death pellets!

  She thought fast. Lusa was dark and small; if she could hide in the shadows of the rocks, the no-claws might not see her. Especially if Kallik could draw them away on her longer, faster legs.

  ‘Lusa!’ Kallik yowled, looking around and finding her friend behind her. ‘Head for those rocks on the left – if you run behind them, they’ll hide you until you can make it to the trees. Run for your life – go, now!’ She gave Lusa a ferocious shove and the bear cub pelted away.

  Kallik dodged in the other direction. In the dim, growing light, her white coat stood out like a splash of seal blood on the ice.

  Bang!

  Ahead of her she saw Toklo slam into Ujurak and knock him down as another death pellet whizzed over their heads.

  ‘Change, Ujurak!’ Toklo yelled. ‘Change! You have to!’

  ‘No! I’m staying with you!’ Ujurak shouted back. ‘I’m a bear! I want to be a bear!’

  Bang! Bang!

  ‘I will die protecting you if you don’t change right now,’ Toklo growled, his voice low but so fierce that Kallik could hear it over her pawsteps as she sped away from them. Her own paws seemed unwilling to obey her. Part of her wanted to stay with Toklo, but she needed to lead the no-claws away from Lusa. So instead she ran and kept running, feeling sure that death was going to thud into her side at any moment, ripping her open and tearing her full of holes.

  Something flapped over her head and she ducked, but when she looked up she realised it was Ujurak as a snowy owl, taking to the skies. She could still see dark patches of fur disappearing into his wings as he soared away. Toklo had won the argument.

  Suddenly the firebeast fell silent, and that was even more terrifying. Now Kallik didn’t know where it might be, or how close. She skidded behind a boulder and peered out. The light from the firebeast’s eyes had gone out. Darkness spread across the valley.

  Where were the no-claws?

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, and then, suddenly, she realised . . . she could smell them.

  There was less smoke at this end of the valley, and scents were sharper than they had been before. Not only that, but the no-claws smelled very strongly of the liquid in the bottles that Lusa had pointed out to her when they raided the rotfood. Lusa had warned her that it tasted foul and musty, and it smelled that way too. All four of the no-claws reeked of it.

  She could tell that two of them had run off in opposite directions, but two of them were very close by. Could she make it to the trees before they spotted her? Crouching low to the ground, she crept out from behind the boulder.

  In the gloomy shadows behind her, she heard a hissing whisper.

  Turning slowly, she saw the two hunters only a few bearlengths away. They were looking straight at her. Behind them, the firebeast waited, still and silent.

  The hunters raised their firesticks.

  All right, chase me! I’m the fastest bear. I’m a white bear. You’ll never catch me!

  Kallik drove her paws into the ground and focused on running, on the strength flowing through her limbs. She remembered racing across the ice with her mother and Taqqiq, escaping from full-grown male white bears. She remembered running away from the walruses. She knew she was good at running.

  She also remembered the looks on the faces of the no-claws that she had scared back by the Big River. Maybe she was scarier than she knew. She had claws and teeth and power in her arms that these no-claws couldn’t dream of. If she turned to fight them, might they run away from her?

  But these no-claws had unfair advantages, like firebeasts to give them speed and sticks that could kill from far away, so that they didn’t need claws and teeth.

  Her sharp nose told her the hunters had split up and stopped. They were crouching, doing something . . .

  Pointing their firesticks at me, she guessed, hearing the click of metal. And she was a large white target, easy to hit even in the trees.

  Kallik noticed that the ground slanted away to her left. She dived and rolled down the slope. Wet soil coated her fur as she tumbled over and over, bouncing off rocks and tree trunks. She landed with a splash in a muddy stream. Kallik rolled and rolled, coating her pelt in thick brown mud.

  She stopped and sniffed the air. The no-claws had lost sight of her; then they were running towards her again. She could hear every movement and crackle of twigs as they ran. They were so loud and clumsy! She slunk up the opposite slope, checking her fur to make sure she was completely covered. Sliding forward on muddy paws, she listened for any sign that they’d spotted her. There were no shouts, no pounding footsteps.

  She began to run. She could tell that the no-claws hadn’t seen her, because they kept going in the wrong direction, creeping around on the far side of the stream.

  What about Lusa and Toklo? Would they make it to the trees? She stretched out her neck and ran.

  Spirits, protect them, please . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:

  Lusa

  Lusa’s paws skidded on loose pebbles as she scrambled behind the rocks, her heart rattling in her chest. She didn’t know where Kallik had gone. One moment the white bear had been shoving her along, and the next moment she was tearing off in a different direction.

  The windswept boulders and mountain peaks formed a path of shadows at the edge of the valley, concealing Lusa as she sprinted forward. Up ahead she could see the clump of trees Toklo had pointed out – but before she could get there, she had to cross back through an open space.

  Lusa didn’t stop to think. She shot out of the rocks and ran, wild with fear, desperate to reach the trees. If she could just feel their branch
es surrounding her, the leaves brushing her fur, she knew she’d be safe. The bear spirits didn’t want her to die. They’d save her from the flat-faces and firesticks. She’d nearly died already, and they wouldn’t let her. She had to save the wild!

  She heard a shout behind her. A flat-face had seen her!

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  She felt whizzing death pellets fly past her fur.

  Lusa squeaked with terror. She was nearly there! The trees were only a bearlength away!

  Bang!

  An explosion of pain blossomed at the top of her shoulder and she stumbled, but she didn’t stop running. She didn’t even let out a howl; she bit back her yelp, forcing her paws to keep pushing forward, carrying her towards the trees. She didn’t want the flat-faces to know they’d hit her. If they knew she was wounded, they’d think she was weak. And right now, Lusa had to be strong.

  With a massive leap, she launched herself at the first tree. Her instincts took over as her back claws dug into the bark. She bounded up the tree the way her father, King, had taught her, fast and nimble and determined. I’m a black bear! No one can climb like us!

  She knew that just being in a tree wouldn’t keep her safe. Firesticks could kill her as easily from the ground while she sat up in the branches like a dazed squirrel. She had to keep going. Lusa thought of Miki and the other bear cubs she’d met at the Longest Day gathering. She could jump from tree to tree the way they did, and that might make it harder for the flat-faces to follow her.

  She didn’t waste time worrying about whether she could do it. As she reached the topmost branch, she scouted ahead for a strong-looking branch on the next tree only a short distance away. Her fear gave her extra strength as she jumped, and she barely felt the pain rippling through her shoulder.

  Bang! went the firesticks again. Bang! This time they sounded further away, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Lusa’s pelt trembled with terror and fury. Those flat-faces were shooting at her friends!